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Taiwan lauded for low casualties in explosion treatment

Taiwan’ Today
Date: June 6, 2016

Taiwan’s successful medical achievement in treating burn victims following the flash-fire at

Taiwan delegates share the country’s experience in treating victims of the Formosa Fun Coast Park flash-fire May 25 to 27 at the European conference in Brussels. (CNA)

Formosa Fun Coast Park last June in New Taipei City won praise at a symposium on treating massive burn casualties held by the Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection under the European Commission in Brussels in late May.

The Taiwan delegation, led by Wang Tsung-hsi, director of Medical Affairs at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, shared the island’s experience after the incident, which left 499 injured, including more than 200 with burn areas of over 40 percent, and more than 20 with burn areas over 80 percent.

There have been several terrorist attacks in France and Belgium in recent years, leaving hundreds dead and injured. With so many incidents at the same time, the local hospitals could not accommodate the victims and had to send them to other countries. Delays in the immediate treatment of the patients, together with incomplete medical resources, pushed the mortality rate up to 20 percent to 50 percent. This compared to the death of 15 victims, or a mortality rate of 3 percent, for the Formosa Fun Coast Park flash-fire.

“That is why Taiwan was invited to the conference because they want to know how we did it,” Wang said. [FULL STORY]

TIAC found wanting over airport flood

TIAC PRESIDENT FIRED:A PCC probe concluded that the failure to promptly close a floodgate explained why the terminal’s basement was inundated with floodwater

Taiei Times
Date: Jun 07, 2016
By: Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

Flooding that severely disrupted the operation of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on

Public Construction Commission Minister Wu Hong-mo, left, announces the findings of an investigation into the recent flooding at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei yesterday. Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times

Thursday last week was caused by a blockage in one of the airport’s draining pipelines that prevented the rapid discharge of floodwater into the Pusin River (埔心溪), an investigation by the Public Construction Commission (PCC) showed.

“Soft gravel accumulated in a box culvert at one end of Pipeline H, making it difficult to discharge floodwater into the river and subsequently leading to flooding in the airport,” PCC Minister Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀) said, adding that Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) failed to respond to the disaster in a timely manner.

The findings were made public at a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei yesterday, which was broadcast live online.

Wu said the three-day investigation showed that accumulated rainfall during a thunderstorm on Thursday morning reached 15.1cm, adding that the airport’s draining system is designed to be able to handle that amount. [FULL STORY]

Democracy nothing to fear: Taiwan to China

Special Broadcasting Service
Date: June 5, 2016
Source: AAP

On the anniversary of China’s bloody crackdown on student-led protests in and around Beijing’s

Hundreds of participants attend a candlelight vigil at Democracy Square in Taipei, Taiwan, Saturday, June 4, 2016 (AAP)

Tiananmen Square, Taiwan’s new president has told China that democracy is nothing to fear.

Tsai Ing-wen said in a Facebook post on Saturday on the 27th anniversary that Taiwan could serve as an example to China.

Tsai said in the run-up to Taiwan’s elections earlier this year that she had seen people from China, as well as the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, mixing with crowds in Taiwan.

“These many friends, after experiencing things for themselves can see that in fact there’s nothing scary about democracy. Democracy is a good and fine thing,” wrote Tsai, who took office last month.

China sent in tanks to break up the demonstrations on June 4, 1989.

Beijing has never released a death toll but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand. [FULL STORY]

McCain: U.S.-Taiwan friendship remains strong

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/06/05
By: Tony Liao, Sofia Yeh, Tai Ya-chen and S.C. Chang

Taipei, June 5 (CNA) The chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee of the United States

President Tsai Ing-wen receives U.S. Senator John McCain in the Presidential Office.

said after meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in Taipei Sunday that U.S.-Taiwan friendship “remains strong.”

In a twitter post, John McCain (R-AZ) also lauded Taiwan as “the only democracy on Chinese soil.”

McCain was leading a group of U.S. senators, including John Barrasso, Gory Gardner, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst and Dan Sullivan, that arrived earlier in the day.

Tsai urged the group to help facilitate U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to beef up the country’s defense, and to strengthen bilateral exchanges and cooperation in the area of military security. [FULL STORY]

The Fight for Freedom Knows No Borders

Why you need to know: The Tiananmen Square Massacre anniversary is a reminder that defending freedom and human rights against tyranny is a common responsibility—and in our best interest.

The News Lens
Date: June 4, 2016
By: J. Michael Cole

Once again this year, the Hong Kong Federation of Students has announced it will not participate

Photo Credit: AP/達志影像

in the June 4 candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, the annual event organized by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed protesters were brutally murdered by the Chinese military in 1989.

A deepening pro-localization sentiment combined with rising Beijing-skepticism among Hong Kong’s youth appear to be the main reasons behind the federation’s decision to not involve itself in the vigil, which every year has attracted tens of thousands of residents in Hong Kong. For the young people who fall in that category and who do not see a common future with China, the human rights situation in China proper may be worrying, but ultimately it is not their problem, and certainly not their responsibility to fix. For some of them, the June 4 commemorations are “meaningless.”

A similar phenomenon has long existed in Taiwan, where the consolidation of a distinct Taiwanese consciousness has contributed to an erosion of support for the cause of human rights in China. Linguistic and cultural affinities not withstanding, for most people in Taiwan, China is a foreign country, and while Beijing’s track record on human rights may be deplorable (and in some respects it is getting worse), it is none of their business. The dwindling numbers of participants at the annual June 4 vigil at Liberty Square in Taipei, with a few hundred people gathering in recent years, may well be the result of such developments in Taiwanese identity. [FULL STORY]

A place to enjoy the time of the past in Douliu

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-06-05
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

The trial operation of the Cultural and Creative Cluster on Yunzhong St. in Douliu City, Yunlin County, kicked off on Sunday with many activities.
The Cultural and Creative Cluster on Yunzhong St. consists of Japanese-style wooden houses built in 1937 in the Japanese Occupation era. After the end of 50 years of Japanese rule in 1945, these houses were used as dormitories for Yunlin County Police Bureau police officers and their families. In 2005, six better maintained houses in the area were registered as historical buildings.

Now these six houses, which are located among big old trees, have been further refurbished and used as cultural and creative industry stores under the Act for Promotion of Private Participation in Infrastructure Projects.

Besides the original black vinyl CD-R discs store and the coffee shop, the other spaces have been stationed by artisans and artists and other businesses and as agricultural produce stores and a startup incubation center. [FULL STORY]

Taiwan, China testing each other’s bottom lines: security agency

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/06/05
By: Wang Cheng-chung and S.C. Chang

Taipei, June 5 (CNA) Taipei and Beijing, deadlocked over the “1992 consensus,” are testing each

President Tsai Ing-wen gives a speech at her inauguration ceremony May 20.

other’s bottom lines in regard to the political foundation of their bilateral relations, the National Security Bureau (NSB) has said, suggesting that Taipei keep communicating with its rival and try to build a bridge of mutual trust.

The NSB made its assessment and suggestions in a written report to the Legislature, prior to NSB head John K. Young’s (楊國強) appearance at a legislative committee meeting Monday. Young, along with the ministers of national defense, foreign affairs and mainland affairs, will jointly attend the meeting, which is aimed at discussing the East Asia situation and Taiwan’s steps to deal with it.

Summing up China’s response to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) May 20 inauguration speech, Young’s agency said that China thinks Tsai has taken “one step closer” to its version of the “1992 consensus,” but is not satisfied with her attempts to evade the “core meaning” of its definition of “one China” — that Taiwan and China belong to “one China.”

That consensus was reached by officials from Taipei and Beijing during meetings in Hong Kong in 1992, when the two sides agreed that there is only “one China,” with each side free to interpret what that means. Taipei defines “one China” as “the Republic of China” — Asia’s first democracy, established in 1912. [FULL STORY]

Premier moots Jinshan reactor restart

IMPOSSIBLE:Activists said the plant ‘is one of the most dangerous in the world’ and would never meet Lin Chuan’s precondition for its restart — that it is ‘safe’

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 06, 2016
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

Campaigners against nuclear power yesterday said they would file a

Premier Lin Chuan, center, yesterday takes part in a calisthenics routine with residents at the Taipei City Haoran Senior Citizens’ Home. Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times

lawsuit against Premier Lin Chuan (林全) over his remark that the government is mulling the restart of the No. 1 reactor at the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Shimen District (石門), which they said would endanger public safety.

Lin came under attack from campaigners, who described the reactivation plan as reneging on the Democratic Progressive Party’s promise of going nuclear-free by 2025.

Green Consumers’ Foundation chairman Jay Fang (方儉) and veteran anti-nuclear power campaigner Lin Jui-chu (林瑞珠) said they would file a lawsuit against the premier today, because the reactivation would be a crime against public safety.

“The No. 1 reactor of the Jinshan plant is the most dangerous in the world, because there are about 40 used fuel rods in the reactor and reusing them might cause an explosion should the reactor be restarted,” Lin Jui-chu said. [FULL STORY]

Taiwanese Sci-Fi Project Nominated for Venture Capital at Korean Film Festival

The News Lens
Date: 2016/06/04,
By: Olivia Yang

A Taiwanese film has been nominated among 238 film projects at the 20th Bucheon

Photo Credit:Sol Robayo@Flickr CC BY 2.0

International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN) for potential post-production support from leading investors in the global film industry.

On May 30, the film project “Love Me or Not” (愛情大數據) was announced as one of the 16 nominees in the 2016 “It Project,” an initiative by the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF), which is part of the BIFAN Industry Gathering. The sci-fi romance is the only Taiwanese project selected this year.

“In the past, we worked with television stations or film companies through taking cases, but we need to wait passively in this working process,” Shaballe Kao (夏佩爾), producer and screenwriter for the film, told The News Lens International.

For “Love Me or Not,” screenwriter Shaballe Kao and director Monica Kao (烏奴奴), screenwriter and director, developed the film project on their own, starting with the screenplay.

“We hope to attract interested film companies or investors through local and international venture capital projects,” Shaballe Kao says.
Though the project faces disadvantages such as lack of affiliation with a well-known producer or film company, the pair says they enjoyed the freedom of creating their screenplay. [FULL STORY]

Train derails in Hualien County

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-06-04
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Six wagons of a train went off the rails near the Hualien County township of Fuli Saturday, but nobody was injured, the Taiwan Railways Administration said.

A Juguang Express train on its way from Taitung up the east coast with Changhua as its final destination saw its second to seventh carriages derail on the stretch between Tungchu and Fuli shortly after noon, officials said.

Nobody was injured, and the accident could have been caused by the heat, according to reports. Taiwan’s Southeast has registered temperatures of more than 38 degrees over the past few weeks.

Because 250 meters of track were damaged and the site of the accident was in a remote area, with only fields and ditches nearby, repair work was difficult, and service would not return to normal until Sunday morning at five, the TRA said. [FULL STORY]

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